The first SADC Investment Promotion Agencies (SADC IPA CEOs) meeting organised by the Board of Investment (BOI) in collaboration with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) opened this morning at the Maritim Hotel in Balaclava.
Some twenty participants namely Chief Executive Officers from twelve SADC countries are attending the one-day meeting in a bid to share their experiences on improving the investment climate, on investment promotion and facilitation, and policy advocacy with a view to promoting SADC as an emerging investment destination and to attracting more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the region.
Speaking this morning, the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Jugnauth, stressed that what is needed in Africa is productive FDI to diversify the economy so as to promote technology transfer, to help alleviate poverty, to improve the overall living standards of the people, to promote economic growth and to empower the entrepreneurs. According to him as the world moves to a new multi-polarity of growth, led by BRIC economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China, more opportunities for attracting FDI are unfolding and countries in the SADC region should be better positioned to fully benefit from them.
On the same occasion, the BOI also signed four Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) of SADC member countries. The objective is to put into place such Cooperation Programmes to assist these agencies as regards experience sharing and capacity building. The MoUs were signed with the Botswana Exports Development and Investment Authority, the Agence Nationale pour la Promotion des Investissements of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Investment Promotion Centre of Mozambique and the Seychelles Investment Bureau. It will be recalled that in 2010 the BOI signed two such MoUs on bilateral cooperation with Swaziland and Zimbabwe and the BOI is working on extending this programme to all SADC IPAs.
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